Efficient management of available technologies. Aplication to mining operations for industry supplies

Nowadays, processing Industry Sector is going through a series of changes, including right management and reduction of environmental affections. Any productive process which looks for sustainable management is incomplete if Cycle of Life of mineral resources sustainability is not taken into account. Raw materials for manufacturing are provided by mineral resources extraction processes, such as copper, aluminum, iron, gold, silver, silicon, titanium? Those elements are necessary for Mankind development and are obtained from the Earth through mineral extractive processes. Mineral extraction processes are operations which must take care about the environmental consequences. Extraction of huge volumes of rock for their transformation into raw materials for industry must be optimized to reduce ecological cost of the final product as l was possible. Reducing the ecological balance on a global scale has no sense to design an efficient manufacturing in secondary industry (transformation), if in first steps of the supply chain (extraction) impact exceeds the savings of resources in successive phases. Mining operations size suggests that it is an environmental aggressive activity, but precisely because of its great impact must be the first element to be considered. That idea implies that a new concept born: Reduce economical and environmental cost This work aims to make a reflection on the parameters that can be modified to reduce the energy cost of the process without an increasing in operational costs and always ensuring the same production capacity. That means minimize economic and environmental cost at same time. An efficient design of mining operation which has taken into account that idea does not implies an increasing of the operating cost. To get this objective is necessary to think in global operation view to make that all departments involved have common guidelines which make you think in the optimization of global energy costs. Sometimes a single operational cost must be increased to reduce global cost. This work makes a review through different design parameters of surface mining setting some key performance indicators (KPIs) which are estimated from an efficient point of view. Those KPIs can be included by HQE Policies as global indicators. The new concept developed is that a new criteria has to be applied in company policies: improve management, improving OPERATIONAL efficiency. That means, that is better to use current resources properly (machinery, equipment,?) than to replace them with new things but not used correctly. As a conclusion, through an efficient management of current technologies in each extractive operation an important reduction of the energy can be achieved looking at downstream in the process. That implies a lower energetic cost in the whole cycle of life in manufactured product.

Greenfield shopping center development. The integration between environmental features, building design and investment analysis at the decision making stage

The Shopping centre is a long term investment in which Greenfield development decisions are often taken based on risks analysis regarding construction costs, location, competition, market and an expected DCF. Furthermore, integration between the building design, project planning, operational costs and investment analysis is not entirely considered by the investor at the decision making stage. The absence of such information tends to produce certain negative impacts on the future running costs and annual maintenance of the building, especially on energy demand and other occupancy expenses paid by the tenants to the landlord. From the investor´s point of view, this blind spot in strategy development will possibly decrease their profit margin as changes in the occupancy expenses[ ] have a direct outcome on the profit margin. In order to try to reduce some higher operating cost components such as energy use and other utility savings as well as their CO2 emissions, quite a few income properties worldwide have some type of environmental label such as BREEAM and LEED. The drawback identified in this labelling is that usually the investments required to get an ecolabel are high and the investor finds no direct evidence that it increases market value. However there is research on certified commercial properties (especially offices) that shows better performance in terms of occupancy rate and rental cost (Warren-Myers, 2012). Additionally, Sayce (2013) says that the certification only provides a quick reference point i.e. the lack of a certificate does not indicate that a building is not sustainable or efficient. Based on the issues described above, this research compares important components of the development stages such as investments costs, concept/ strategy development as well as the current investor income and property value. The subjects for this analysis are a shopping centre designed with passive cooling/bioclimatic strategies evaluated at the decision making stage, a certified regional shopping centre and a non-certified standard regional shopping centre. Moreover, the proposal intends to provide decision makers with some tools for linking green design features to the investment analysis in order to optimize the decision making process when looking into cost savings and design quality.

On track for solar grade silicon through a siemens process-type laboratory reactor: operating conditions and energy savings

Polysilicon cost impacts significantly on the photovoltaics (PV) cost and on the energy payback time. Nowadays, the besetting production process is the so called Siemens process, polysilicon deposition by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) from Trichlorosilane. Polysilicon purification level for PV is to a certain extent less demanding that for microelectronics. At the Instituto de Energía Solar (IES) research on this subject is performed through a Siemens process-type laboratory reactor. Through the laboratory CVD prototype at the IES laboratories, valuable information about the phenomena involved in the polysilicon deposition process and the operating conditions is obtained. Polysilicon deposition by CVD is a complex process due to the big number of parameters involved. A study on the influence of temperature and inlet gas mixture composition on the polysilicon deposition growth rate, based on experimental experience, is shown. Moreover, CVD process accounts for the largest contribution to the energy consumption of the polysilicon production. In addition, radiation phenomenon is the major responsible for low energetic efficiency of the whole process. This work presents a model of radiation heat loss, and the theoretical calculations are confirmed experimentally through a prototype reactor at our disposal, yielding a valuable know-how for energy consumption reduction at industrial Siemens reactors.